Not particularly relevant to the comic, but I once, many years ago, asked a waiter, “What’s the soup du jour?” and he actually said, “That’s a different soup every day.” To his credit, he did give me the answer I was looking for when I said, “I know that. What is it TODAY?”

That speech defect is one of the things that really annoys me about this strip because it is totally inconsistent. Sometimes it’s obvious to try to make the strip funny. Sometimes it’s left out entirely, and other times it changes from panel to panel in the same strip! (e.g. “same shtrip”)

OK, so the cat’s got a speech defect. What’s funny about that? It’s not like he’s saying “Do you mind if I shit here?” or something similarly hilarious. He’s just mispronouncing a word.

And on the “soup du jour” front, I always find myself asking “what’s today’s soup?” to avoid the all-round embarrassment of an idiot waiter making the assumption that I don’t speak enough French to work out the concept.

The joke is not the cat’s pronunciation, which is just the way this cat talks. The joke is that a cat and a dog are sitting at a lunch counter and the cat is asking about the soup du jour. (Why we don’t say either English “soup of the day” or French “potage du jour” is a mystery to me.)

I think the cook is trying to make the diner sound classier by writing “soup du jour” on the menu. The attempt at classiness is lost on the patrons, prompting them to ask each other what this “soup du jour” thing is.